Fait Diver: Ex Benedict

“Citing advanced years and infirmity, but showing characteristic tough-mindedness and unpredictability, Pope Benedict XVI shocked Roman Catholics on Monday by saying that he would resign on Feb. 28, becoming the first pope to do so in six centuries.”

Dear Brothers,
I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering
However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is. Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.
From the Vatican, 10 February 2013
BENEDICTUS PP XVI

“A shy, tough-minded theologian who seemed to relish writing books more than greeting stadium crowds, Benedict, 85, was elected by fellow cardinals in 2005 after the death of John Paul II. An often divisive figure, he spent much of his papacy in the shadow of his beloved predecessor.
Above all, Benedict’s papacy was overshadowed by clerical abuse scandals, a case involving documents leaked from within the Vatican itself and tangles with Jews, Muslims and Anglicans. In his handling of the sexual abuse crisis, critics said that his failures of governance were tantamount to moral failings”

Can we see that slap again ?

“The church’s 265th pope, Benedict was the first German to hold the title in half a millennium, and his election was a milestone toward Germany’s spiritual renewal 60 years after World War II and the Holocaust. At 78, he was also the oldest new pope since 1730.

In 2009, Benedict provoked global outrage when he revoked the excommunication of four schismatic bishops from the archtraditionalist Society of St. Pius X, one of whom, Richard Williamson, had denied the scope of the Holocaust in a television interview.”

Well what do you expect from a Hitlerjungen anyway?

“Above all, Benedict’s tenure was entangled in growing sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church that crept ever closer to the Vatican itself.”

A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope’s brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.
Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope’s older brother, Georg Ratzinger.
Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.
“In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence,” said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities. A church spokesman called her criticisms “absurd”.
A separate sex scandal has also enveloped the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after three people said they were abused at a boarding school run by priests in the 1960s. Since the allegations were published on Friday more than 200 people have come forward to a designated helpline claiming that they were also abused by monks and priests.
The new allegations are a source of major embarrassment to the Vatican, which had been hoping to draw a line under child abuse. Over the past decade the issue has enormously damaged the church’s reputation and finances.
The allegations in Germany first surfaced last month when investigators began looking into a series of Jesuit schools, but the scandal broadened out over the weekend into the heart of deeply Catholic Bavaria. The allegations coming out of the Regensburg diocese are particularly awkward because the Pope and his brother spent much of their careers in senior positions there, which will inevitably raise questions as to whether they ever encountered or heard about clergy who sexually abused minors.
Throughout the 1970s Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg. His older brother Georg took over the Regensburger Domspatzen in 1964 and, over the next 30 years, helped turn the male-only choir into one of the best in the world.
But he says that he never heard of any abuse in his time with the choir. Asked by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica whether he would talk to German officials, the 86-year-old Mgr Ratzinger replied: “Obviously I’d be ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don’t have any – I never knew anything about it.”
Any abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen, he said, occurred before he took over. He did admit that pupils at the school were subjected to a climate of “discipline and rigour” but added that this was necessary in order to reach “a high musical, artistic level”.
But Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by “a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust”. He was also quoted by ‘Der Spiegel’ as saying that it was “inexplicable” that the Pope’s brother knew nothing of what was happening.The new sex scandals have emerged just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI gave Ireland’s bishops a public dressing down for failing to deal with child abuse which he described as a “heinous crime”. He also called on Catholic bishops to tackle allegations with “honesty and courage”. But, while the Vatican has given its backing to a full investigation of the allegations, the Pope has so far remained personally silent on the matter.
We Are Church, a prominent Christian support network for abuse victims, has now called on the Pope publicly to declare whether he knew of any abuse allegations when he was a bishop.
“He must answer the question about what he knew and what he did about it,” said Christian Weisner, the group’s German spokesperson.

Liberace had a brother George too.

No scandal attached to him as far as we know. Just the “scandal” of Lee being a Big Old Mo’

Needless to say he would have made a FABULOUS Pope

“Benedict “centered his papacy on giving faith to Christians, focusing on the essence of what it means to be a Christian, and he managed to do it in spite of the fact that his communicative capacities weren’t so brilliant,” the Vatican expert Sandro Magister said. “Most common people, I don’t mean intellectuals, saw him as a disinterested man who spent all his life for a high cause, which was to revive the faith.”
In Rome, where souvenir shops often carry more postcards of John Paul than of Benedict, news of Benedict’s resignation was met with surprise and some sadness. “Anyone could tell that he was old and sick, and that such a complicated situation like the one he has to face is a lot, but I had never heard that a pope could quit,” said Simonetta Piersanti, 52, a cleaning woman in a residence run by nuns.
She mentioned a common Roman saying, “When a pope dies, they just elect another,” which captures the lack of excitement with which Italians greet historic events. “We’ll have to do it even without the death part,” she added.”

Now what?

Maybe Nanni Moretti could help.

Or maybe not.

But don’t ask me. The only Pope I’ve ever liked was Ondine

But what after all s to be done with the world’s largest, wealthiest and most thoroughly lawyered pedophile cult?

Will the last person to leave the Catholic Church please put out the candles, Laura.